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Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

reuters.com

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Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#291

Post by caditinpiscinam »

scott_w wrote: post #255
caditinpiscinam wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I understand it, the article describes how, for companies that are going bankrupt, handling victim payouts through bankruptcy is more equitable, since it considers the situation holistically, rather than on a first-come first-serve basis. However, for companies like J&J that aren't actually going bankrupt, this process also allows them to protect their business and to pay less than they would normally. Otherwise,…

> this process also allows them to protect their business Obviously, yes. > to pay less than they would normally. Not necessarily. You missed the part where they have a specialist court divide up the claims in a single go, rather than have ad-hoc juries hand out different awards to different claimants. > aren't actually going bankrupt You’re missing the part that this is kind of allowed in Texas courts. It’s not unre…

> You missed the part where they have a specialist court divide up the claims in a single go, rather than have ad-hoc juries hand out different awards to different claimants.

What gives you that impression?

> You’re missing the part that this is kind of allowed in Texas courts.

It would seem that what they did was not allowed, given that they lost their case.

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#292

Post by tiahura »

albedoa wrote: post #281
tiahura wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ambulance chaser here. The most common reasons I don’t offer evidence of bills in a trial are that Medicaid paid the bill for pennies on the dollar, or the hospital wrote off the bills. In many jurisdictions, if the Plaintiff chooses to introduce evidence of bills, they can only submit the amount still owed or actually paid to satisfy the bill, and the amount that was written off or contractually adjusted stays out.…

Wouldn't it then be prudent for the defendant to introduce that evidence? Do they ever do that to achieve the effect on perceived non-economic damages that you describe?

It might be, but they can’t. If plaintiff doesn’t ask for compensation for the bills then an itemized bill isn’t relevant evidence to any of the claims or defenses in the case.

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#293

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

mcpackieh wrote: post #42
NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #38

External-use-only products based on talc have been yanked from all shelves in every pharmacy and grocery store nationwide, while ironically, talc still remains on the shelves in pill form: alli® is an OTC weight-loss medication. https://www.myalli.com/content/dam/cf-consumer-healthcare/my... I don't really want to think about the mechanism by which talc induces weight loss along with the active ingredient.

It's listed as an inactive ingredient, so presumably it's just bulking up or binding together the pill in some way. Talc is approved as a food additive in the US and EU, it's probably fine. Considering the high profile nature of the baby powder lawsuit, I'd eat my boots if there aren't people examining other talc products looking for a new lawsuit opportunity. Besides, it's bound up in a pill instead of in a loose fi…

It's interesting that talc is also in various TUMS antacid products. https://www.tums.com/antacid-products/ultra-1000/

And I took a rough survey, based on Googling "what happens if I eat talc" and some poison control centers say it's safe and harmless, while others have drunk the asbestos-laced Kool-Aid and say that it will probably cause cancer. This mostly in terms of talcum-based baby powder, which is harder to find than hen's teeth at this point.

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#294

Post by scott_w »

orthecreedence wrote: post #267
scott_w wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what good will bankrupting J&J at the first lawsuit do for society?

"What good will it do society to punish people who do heinous things to others?" It acts as a great deterrent to keep other corporate stooges from entering into high-risk activities. In many cases I advocate for "restorative justice" as opposed to punishment, but in the case of faceless corporations we can crash their value to 0 and call it even. We have a system of private ownership where the owners get to reap the…

Bankrupting J&J would achieve none of the things you say you want. It would just mean the first to sue gets everything and everyone else gets nothing. The assets get stripped and sold off to the next company who can just continue to do the same thing.

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#295

Post by scott_w »

littlestymaar wrote: post #285
scott_w wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what good will bankrupting J&J at the first lawsuit do for society?

Ask yourself “what good had jailing Charles Manson at the first lawsuit done for society?” then remember that J&J is responsible for thousands more death than Manson, and likely more than all psycho killers in the history of the US combined… Rogue corporations are killing people at a scaled rivalled only by dictators…

Comparing a pharmaceutical company to Charles Manson or Pol Pot is… frankly insane.

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#296

Post by littlestymaar »

scott_w wrote: post #295
littlestymaar wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask yourself “what good had jailing Charles Manson at the first lawsuit done for society?” then remember that J&J is responsible for thousands more death than Manson, and likely more than all psycho killers in the history of the US combined… Rogue corporations are killing people at a scaled rivalled only by dictators…

Comparing a pharmaceutical company to Charles Manson or Pol Pot is… frankly insane.

At least THIRTY NINE THOUSAND people suffered from a cancer that would have been avoided if the execs, who knew about the dangerousness of their product, stopped selling their contaminated crap. We're talking about TENS OF THOUSANDS of shattered lives, children who ended up growing without a mother, and women not able to bear children because the cancer destroyed their body.

This is what's “insane”.

The people who knowingly made this happen are literal monsters, there's just no other words.

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#297

Post by themitigating »

kevinventullo wrote: post #221
themitigating wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the problem. Who? The CEO and eveyone near him is rich, they company going out of business won't affect them. I'm sure they'll be able to get high paying jobs. In fact the negative association with this case would have me wanting to move on

A large portion of the CEO’s wealth is almost certainly tied up in company equity, and this is true for the shareholders by definition. Anyway, it’s not about teaching them anything, it’s about influencing the risk/reward calculus of other companies that are considering skipping steps and releasing unsafe products.

I disagree about influencing the risk reward calculation because the punishment is supposed to be a deterrent.

If it's just a fine then the money is like fee to do something and remember that it's not always caught.

Imagine if the punishment for murder was $1 million dollars and only if I'm caught.

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#298

Post by themitigating »

Hikikomori wrote: post #231
scotty79 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Owners. Behind all of the corporate management theatre are always some owners that will squeeze everyone in any way possible to protect their money.

Like pension funds?

As an investor in a company, even if it's a fund, you are part of the risk. If something fails and the pension fund is wiped out that's what happens

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#299

Post by KyleBerezin »

bagacrap wrote: post #51
SapporoChris wrote: post #15

This agency https://www.cancer.org/cancer/risk-prevention/chemicals/talc... seems to downplay the risk of cancer. Is it possible Johnson and Johnson have been maligned? I'm not an advocate, I'd be interested in seeing significant evidence that their product causes cancer. However, I'd like to see a firm distinction between talc and talc contaminated with asbestos. The link with asbestos and cancer is clear. I'm not c…

"J&J is facing more than 38,000 lawsuits alleging that the company's talc products, including its Baby Powder, were contaminated by asbestos and caused cancers"

And what does that prove? I'm not taking a side, but that just shows that 38,000 people got cancer and are litigating agains J&J. In a hypothetical world where talc doesn't cause cancer, and this study was published in error, I would still expect those sorts of numbers.

Re: Johnson and Johnson sues researchers who linked talc to cancer

#300

Post by ouraf »

codelord wrote: post #103

As someone who did a PhD and published and read many papers (in ML) I believe vast majority of papers in ML are misleading. If in fact every paper that claims a better performance over state of the art was true we would have solved AI by now. You see all sorts of problems when you dig deeper into the technical details of peer reviewed publications (even in top tier conferences) including misleading baselines, statist…

It is as bad in medicine, if not worse. Recently a very influential paper about alzheimer was pulled[1] because of almost everything you said, but for biology instead: data fabrication, overestimating numbers, etc.

There's also a case related with cloning (which includes stem cell research) and massive fraud in South Korea 20 or so years ago.[2]

It's a complicated matter: research is a beacon of light on top of a mountain of failed experiments. And not even the government will fund a mountain of failures if your shining discovery at the end can't bring returns to society (or shareholders) in greater value than what you took.

And the pharmaceutical industry never settled for small results. And, unlike ML, it's much harder to test things as an outsider (you can hate the hype, but openAI, hugging face and all these "open" language models makes it much easier to learn, test, tweak and improve things without a master's degree in data engineering.).

It's a grimy area to research even as a pastime. There's a lot of recorded practices both in research and production that makes you question how low can a person go for money

1: https://www.science.org/content/article/potential-fabricatio...

2: https://youtu.be/ett_8wLJ87U

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